I’ve been a fan of Stephen Colbert for as long as I can remember. He was a great contributor to the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and then showed his real genius on the Colbert Report. He’s been pointing out and mocking Republican bullshit for years on the Late Show. Over the last few days he has been mercilessly hammering the kooks and liars at the Republican convention, to my delight.
However, last night he interviewed ex-Rep congressman Trey Gowdy, and disappointingly dropped the ball. Gowdy was trying to pretend that he had not been just another extremist nutjob during his terms in Congress, and then he unsurprisingly told the lie that it had been “proven” during the Mueller investigation that the Trump campaign didn’t collude with the Russians.
I was eagerly anticipating Stephen dropping the hammer on Gowdy by pointing out the Senate Intelligence Committee’s bipartisan assessment that the Trump campaign did indeed collude with the Russians. Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort communicated directly with a Russian intelligence officer on a regular basis, and gave the Russians critical campaign information. There was all kinds of coordination and communications documented. I waited for Stephen’s blistering response to Gowdy’s lies and … nothing. No response from Stephen. This may seem like a pretty trivial complaint, but it really deflated me, because I see this so often with Democrats, who constantly miss the opportunity to push back on zombie Republican lies.
I understand that sometimes it’s difficult to dredge up these facts when conducting an interview (Stephen is better than most and I still think he’s great), but I’m frustrated as hell that this seems to be a normal occurrence with almost all liberal politicians, pundits, and tv personalities. The Senate Intelligence Committee’s report is basically proof that Trump colluded with the Russians, yet very few people can seem to remember this critical fact when discussing Russian election interference. No one even seems to care much anymore. Trump’s garbage about “no collusion, no obstruction” has apparently been totally successful.
Republicans were able to take the nothingburger stories about Benghazi and Hillary’s emails, and through constant repetition and outright lies, turn them into electoral success. The Democrats have more political ammunition against Trump than any political party in the history of his country, and can’t seem to effectively take advantage of it. It’s really discouraging that the Democrats’ messaging is so inferior to that of Republicans.
